The year is 1898, and celebrated painter Anthony Toyner is dying. Determined to complete one final masterpiece, he travels to Crowford, a coastal town with a dangerous reputation. Convinced that he'll find the inspiration for his last painting, Toyner never suspects that he's about to become embroiled in a battle for hundreds of souls. Soon after arriving in Crowford, Toyner encounters a mysterious nun who is staying in the same public house. Sister Elsa Farr has a tendency to sneak out in the middle of the night, and one morning she returns with serious injuries. She refuses to say what happened or where she's been, but Toyner discovers that she's particularly interested in an abandoned church beyond the outskirts of town. Something deadly lurks in that church, something that one destroyed an entire village. What really draws Sister Elsa back to the church night after night? Can Anthony Toyner discover what happened to the lost village before tragedy strikes again? And is his final painting, the centerpiece of an exhibition a century later, really cursed?